Award Data

This STTR Phase II effort will demonstrate that a blending of Optimally Distributed Sensing and Actuation (ODAS) with Adaptive Filtering and Disturbance Feed-forward (AFDF) techniques can simultaneously mitigate the impacts of Directed Energy (DE) system payloads on aircraft while improving the Acquisition, Tracking, and Pointing (ATP) performance of DE systems. The innovation is the integration ...

This effort pursues the further development of an architecture for a single unified simulation capability that encompasses all of the effects needed to accurately predict and subsequently control the complex dynamics of future lightweight flexible space systems. The Phase I effort prototyped this architecture using the AFRL/VS PowerSail system as an example case. This proposal presents the oppo ...

Concern exists in the space industry about the effect of µPPT and the Hall Effect Thrusters on spacecraft and their power generation systems. Numerical modeling data must be verified with on-orbit data because ground measurements of contamination effects in vacuum chambers do not fully reflect space conditions. Thus, a sensor package will be manifested aboard an upcoming spacecraft flight for th ...

Recent military campaigns in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq have highlighted the importance of unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) to national defense and security. While UAVs have already begun to play an important role in military operations, the full impact of the technology will only be felt when autonomous capabilities of UAVs are fully developed and realized. This proposal addr ...

Development of self-deploying, large scale SME membranes, suitable for use in the near term as light collectors and radiators, and in the far term as optical mirrors, requires signficant advances in the materails science of thin film SME materials. Scaleable processing to large (>4m diameter) membranes cannot easily be done for TiNi, however the Shape Memory Alloy AuCd can be processed due to the ...

WaveBand Corporation, in cooperation with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, is developing a new source of electromagnetic radiation in the terahertz spectral range. The source is based on an electrically driven III-Nitride semiconductor superlattice designed to deliver high-power and high-frequency current oscillations. The fabrication technology employs robust metal-organic vapor chemica ...

The goal of this STTR (Phase I and II) is to develop a miniature, low power system to detect chemical and biological warfare agents and related industrial chemicals in seawater and the air immediately above the water surface. The system is to be deployed in the Navy's Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS (REMUS) Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). Ionfinity, together with its partners, the NA ...

This proposal is for the design and development of a challenging, adaptable, and extendible AI system for use in state-of-the-art computer-based wargames. The development will result in a 3rd generation computer wargame based on modern air power conflict and the ability to apply the technology developed for this project in other wargames ranging from tactical ground-based warfare to naval conflic ...

A suite of sensors is required to detect, analyze, track, and report position, speed, and direction of travel of watercraft in interior waterways. WaveBand's millimeter-wave sensors have demonstrated the capability to provide watercraft data whose attributes contain the position, speed, and direction of travel of these objects. The sensors are also capable of furnishing near-photographic quality ...

A space-saving, economical, collapsible alternative to rigid sunshades-and particularly a replacement for beryllium sunshades-for the protection of optical coatings and heat seeking sensors on kinetic kill vehicles and similar equipment. The bellows sunshade is a self-deploying, non-toxic, titanium, all metallic, non-outgassing cylindrical shield that can expand up to twelve times its stowed leng ...